Unleashed

Andrzej Otrębski

What would you be like if you were utterly and completely unleashed? No restraints, no inhibitions, no one putting on the brakes or thwarting your efforts; you are absolutely in control! What would you be like? Who would you be? What would you do? What potential has lain dormant within, long awaiting an opportunity to burst forth? What dreams would realize their fulfillment? What fears set free?

Would you buy everything you’ve ever dreamed of? Would you give away large sums of money to worthwhile projects and people? Would you set up an organization to feed the world’s impoverished, to rid our world of tyrannical régimes, warlords, unethical politicians and businessmen? Would you promote “pure religion, undefiled?” How much good might you be able to accomplish given the possibility that there was nothing, nothingholding you back? Right now…, dream about it. What would you do if nothing could stop you?

Of course, most of us live a life of limitations. Commitments, responsibilities, mortgages, rent, college loans, car loans, even TV loans! Daily obligations swirl around us like a tornado, spinning us deeper into a vortex of the ever increasing winds of captivity. Prometheus Bound. We seem never strong enough to break free from the chains that bind us. To be sure, much of our bondage stems from financial over-commitment. What was that adage? “Expenses rise to meet income.” Far too many of us passed that marker long ago.

Now it must be stated emphatically that being truly unleashed is not simply about being financially affluent; it is not all about money. Rather, it is more a matter of consistently removing yourself from Position #1, and intentionally relegating yourself to a lower place along the human food chain. Position #2 is a good start; but why not Position #14, or #79? To become genuinely unleashed you must learn to place the needs, the brokenness, and the pain of others ahead of your own. The amount of our wealth, energy, and time do we reinvest into our family, our neighbors, and our society will have a direct bearing on the shackles that bind us If our bottom line continues to be profit, our chain will hold us ever more tightly to Prometheus’ Rock. And, like Prometheus, it will repetitively eat away at us.

Relaxing our clutch on those external things that we grasp for security has a peculiar side effect— it breaks our vice-grip on the non-essentials that bind our hearts and spirits within. We become something other than once we were. We become truly free. A continual releasing of things comes with a surprise; we might awake one morning and feel we are genuinely unleashed. Now we can grab life and give it all we have! But it all starts with stepping down from being #1.